Health Tech Buying Guides

Most health tech is marketed toward people who are generally healthy and want to stay that way. That's fine, but it leaves out the people who actually need this stuff: those managing a known condition, following up on a doctor's recommendation, or recovering from something.

This hub covers devices that fall into a useful middle ground — not hospital equipment, but not just step counters either. FDA clearance matters here. "Clinical accuracy" on a product page means almost nothing; a cleared device has been tested against a reference standard and the results have been reviewed. We weight that heavily.

The categories covered here are:

Portable ECG monitors — for people tracking atrial fibrillation, managing known arrhythmias, or sharing rhythm data with a cardiologist. These give you a real single- or six-lead ECG in 30 seconds. The data exports to PDF, which your doctor can actually read.

Smart rings — the form factor matters. A ring stays on during sleep without the discomfort of a wrist device, which makes continuous HRV and sleep stage tracking significantly more accurate. The trade-off is a smaller display (usually none) and a companion app that does the heavy lifting.

Fitness trackers and wristbands — covering the range from basic step counters to full multi-sport watches with heart rate, SpO2, and stress tracking. The accuracy gap between budget and premium options has narrowed considerably, but the app ecosystem and long-term firmware support have not.

GPS watches — specifically for trail running and outdoor sports. Battery life during navigation matters more than display resolution. The Garmin vs. COROS vs. Suunto debate is real and the right answer depends on whether you're doing ultras, hiking, or road running.

What we don't cover here: general smartwatches that happen to include ECG as a checkbox feature. The ECG implementations in consumer smartwatches are almost universally less useful for monitoring purposes than a dedicated device. If you're tracking a condition, get the dedicated tool.